


Shooting Stars

by Morbane



Series: The Afro-Cuban Rainbow Bridge [2]
Category: Danger 5
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Gen, Silly, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is unexpectedly hazardous to pave the sky-roads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shooting Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).



 

They had flown out from the western desert to a point above the ocean west of Cape Verde - a name that gave a good omen to their mission.

“Castle in the Air in view,” reported Claire from the cockpit of the Dangertransport.

“Confirm rainbow foundation,” agreed Jackson. Pierre and Ilsa were the lead elements of the finger-four formation, with Tucker and Jackson on the lookout for Nazi sabotage.

The structure ahead of them was half solid, half sublimated; a mix of sunset clouds that had been petrified, and stones that, upon the decay of the rainbow, had flashed back into vapour.

Claire retracted her undercarriage, ejecting the unicorn – "like Pegasus from the neck of Medusa," enthused Tucker to no one in particular, recalling his schoolboy days. It alighted on the cloud castle, which rippled and solidified under its hooves, and then bounded east-southeast, away from the nearest jets. 

“We’re off!” whooped Pierre. “Go Donner! Go Blitzen!”

“No, Pierre,” crackled Claire. “Those are the reindeer of the Fuhrer.”

 

Twenty minutes into the building of the rainbow, the first missile appeared.

A giant rock, pale, almost silvery underneath a halo of fire, appeared at a low angle as if a giant hand had thrown it over the horizon towards the Danger team.

Ilsa radioed in an ICBM.

The team scattered. The unicorn did not. The unicorn dashed forwards, its rainbow-exhaust growing denser, and met the projectile head-on. The air boomed. The giant rock was now shrapnel that swirled behind the unicorn into an orderly formation, paving for the unicorn's road.

"Inter- _celestial_ ballistic missile," corrected Pierre.

"Meteorom?"

"Precisely, my friend."

It was not an isolated occurrence. Soon the shooting stars were flying thick and fast, and their orderly debris stretched out across the world behind the unicorn, glittering. Not all the star-shards fell into line. The air shimmered like a bad acid trip. It was like flying through a dewdrop. Soon the Danger 5 team's guns were firing in earnest. The unicorn did not choose to intercept each flying object.

The unicorn slowed and sped and slowed and sped. Overall, it slowed. This meant that Claire, in the transport, had no trouble keeping up. This meant that Claire, observing the rain of fire, finally declared: enough.

"Ease back!" she ordered. With the slackening of its pursuers, the unicorn slowed too. Claire pulled up and away. A golden net billowed out from the back of the transport, and the stars tumbled into it with sizzles and pops. Taking the upper quadrant of the onslaught, narrowing the angle of attack her team faced, Claire returned the volley to a manageable level.

There was a dogfight, of course. There was always a dogfight.

"Squadron approaching from Mittelafrika," Claire reported.

"Let's see how they like the weather around here," said Jackson.

But this squadron was just a squadron. They weren't hopped up on hypnotic disco. The spirits of Arabian rocs weren't trapped in diamonds lodged within their planes' metal shells. They died for the Reich.

Claire dropped half of her cargo on the Nazi planes while Tucker and Jackson engaged their flank. They vanished in fireballs of decompressing metal and rock; gone.

Really, that section of the voyage was most notable for the way that the rainbow, as drawn by a unicorn agitated by the Nazis, would evermore bend in a cloverleaf knot through the air.

Claire checked over the transport upon landing. She found a sliver of meteor lodged outside a nacelle.

Colonel Chestbridge would confiscate the rest of the fallen stars, of course. He would say something about iridium. Claire didn't blame him.

She formed a thought: _I wish Hitler was long dead and gone_ , and felt the sliver of meteor heat up, radiant, expanding. "I didn't mean it," she said aloud, and the explosion that was about to turn her world white around her stopped in mid-track.

The next idea that came to her was simpler and pettier: the perfect line to use on Tucker. And that was funny, because the thought of retorts had been gone from her head from the moment she'd released the unicorn. A mission always painted a larger picture. What a pity that the picture must shrink again.

But it must, and it would, so Claire shrugged, and made the wish anyway. The star-shard shot into the air like a flare, and her hand stung precisely as it had after slapping Tucker.

Her tiny fizzle was echoed by a much louder explosion, and Claire smiled in spite of herself. Ilsa's wish had set her plane on fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Following the incident in the pilot with the nuns and the coins, I am convinced Claire has the ability to impart _absurd_ acceleration to objects. And possibly to dampen it.
> 
> I am a little abashed about the physics and logistics, the lord king bad photoshopping, and other exaggerations. But all is meant in a cheerful spirit.


End file.
